Just lately, I’m a happy fella. After two and a bit years, I’ve finally been reunited with my Cambridge system and my music collection.

Skipping a long and fairly tedious story, following a redundancy, my (Polish) wife, our nine-year-old and I relocated from Ireland to Poland in 2024 and moved in with my mother-in-law. That may make a lot of you shudder at the thought, but our plan was to build her a new place in her garden while we renovated her house. Also in the deal was that, if I was to fund all this work, I could build a listening room/study/man cave of my own.

During our time in Ireland, we’d rented four different houses in six years, but I’d always found a place for my music collection and system. Work meant that I didn’t always get to spend much time with it, and the layout wasn’t always great, but I compromised, like we all have to. But now in Poland, I had the chance to build something just how I wanted it. I’m no audiophile, but I have some rather nice Cambridge gear and a record and CD collection that tells the story of my life. Having this new space would be worth the wait while we dealt with the daily management of contractors and the endless micro-decisions involved in such a project.

18 months later, and while the kitchen was still a seemingly never-ending ‘work in progress’, the first sod was dug on my new place on Valentine’s Day this year. Space and budget had led me to a room that would be 8m long by 4m wide. It would be part listening space and part office-cum-library, so I worked out a layout using the basic principles we’ve all heard about when setting up a listening room. I planned a higher ceiling than standard, suspended below extra insulation (absorption) and braced for a ‘cloud’ of acoustic treatment sometime in the future. I also made sure the sockets were where they needed to be to feed the system, and wired from a separate breaker to the rest of the house.

My system is built around a Cambridge Audio CXN100 network player, Alva TT turntable (fitted with an Ortofon Bronze), CXC CD transport and CXA81 integrated amplifier, driving a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 603 S2 Anniversary speakers. I’d only had the CXN100 for a couple of months before I had to pack it up for the move, so I was looking forward to what was effectively a new piece of gear.

I have a modest but very precious (to me) record collection, including the first record I ever bought, ‘White Lines’ by Grandmaster Flash, and lots of vinyl that tell my life story, and from before there was an alternative. Despite various ‘culls’ over the years, I still have about 600 CDs too. For the last few years, my tastes had become almost exclusively glitchy, dubby electronic IDM and ambient, and while I still bought records, the limited number of shops in Ireland had made streaming my main way of consuming music, using Tidal.

By the end of June 2026, the room was just about finished and I slowly began moving in. Imagine the feeling of being reunited with your gear and collections after a two-year break. The temptation was to rush, but I took my time. I savoured it. I took care with details such as building the Kallax cubes for the system, then bracing them and fitting a beechwood top surface and sign board back panels. I bought thick curtains and fitted piano mats under the rugs. I agonised over colours for too long!

While I had limited access to music, was that I watched more YouTube, including John Darko’s channel and Ron at New Record Day. First up, I used Ron’s LOTS process to position the speakers, and it was a revelation. I’d always known they needed to be away from the wall, but I’d assumed 30cm or so would be sufficient. Following the process, I ended up with the speakers 1.5m into the room and much closer to me than I expected.

What that does for the soundstage is genuinely incredible.

After watching John Darko, I became acoustic-treatment-curious. While I would never have the budget for his €16,000 installation, I decided I’d at least try a little treatment. I bought an inexpensive measurement microphone and began experimenting with Room EQ Wizard, then built some acoustic panels and bought a few more from a Polish company called Addictive Sound. I treated the front corners, first reflection points and the space behind the speakers to reduce SBIR issues. I won’t pretend that it is close to a fully acoustically treated room, but I’m happy with the difference it made, given the modest investment.

Honestly, the whole subject of acoustic treatment blew my mind, and the endless, usually contradictory opinions online were truly frustrating. But I could see that the room measured better after the treatments than before, and other than room-induced a dip at 55Hz, the response was looking pretty good — something I might look to address with a subwoofer at some point.

Whatever the REW charts said, my ears were telling me that a good system in a room that I’ve lucky enough to have been able to dedicate to listening simply brings me closer to the music. I’m discovering things in albums I thought I knew inside out: small details, perhaps, such as a bass sound I’ve heard for thirty years as just a kick that is actually built from several elements working together, how sounds attack and decay, or the way a band are positioned across a soundstage in front of and around me.

As for the first record I played once everything was in place… ‘On Being’ by Max Cooper. Max is one of my favourite artists and I’d pre-ordered his album back in 2024, despite having no way to play it at the time. I’d left the triple clear vinyl record in a beautiful fold out sleeve sealed in the packaging so I could enjoy the full experience once I was ready.

When I finally lowered the needle, it felt like more than just the first play of a new record. It was the moment the waiting ended. Two years of packing, moving, stress, noise, dust and worry; all the time missing this sensation, this familiar ritual.

Max’s massively complex abstract electronics were the perfect workout for the system, and his renowned use of placement lit up the space in front of me with detail and intricacy. The cliches you’ve heard about vanishing speakers and three-dimensional soundstages were all demonstrated. The music wasn’t simply coming from the speakers; it filled the room in a way that made the planning (and investment!) feel worthwhile.

I’ve not moved far from my listening chair since. There are still albums to rediscover, records to open and familiar sounds to meet again as if for the first time. After two years without a proper place to listen, I’m making up for lost time — one side, one track and one small revelation at a time.